


Leave Me Breathless

by Lady_Phenyx



Series: Whumptober 2019 [23]
Category: Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson, 楽しいムーミン一家 | Moomin (Anime 1990)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Snusmumriken | Snufkin Has Paws, ask to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 09:44:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Phenyx/pseuds/Lady_Phenyx
Summary: A sudden cave in leaves Snufkin and Little My trapped inside, with Moomin and Snorkmaiden outside.Moomin and Snorkmaiden are rushing to the rescue, but the the air inside the cave is running out.And it's a race against time.Whumptober Day 19: Asphyxiation





	Leave Me Breathless

Sometimes, it was amazing how Moomin could have lived his entire life in this valley and still find new things to explore.

Then again, Moomin Valley was a large place, and he and his friends did roam farther the older they got, especially once Snufkin joined them, Snufkin who took care of himself since he was young and still sometimes disappeared for days on end.

And it was amazing how many caves there were in these mountains still unexplored.

Moomin and Snorkmaiden paused outside the latest cave they'd found, starting to set up the picnic lunch Moominmamma had sent along with them while Little My and Snufkin headed inside to explore, Little My in the lead.

They crept their way along but found it wasn't a deep cave – it had a large chamber just inside the opening, narrowing to an arched opening leading to a smaller chamber deeper inside, but that was all they could find.

“Well, this was disappointing,” Little My said, kicking at a rock.

“I don't know, it could be a nice cave if we needed shelter,” Snufkin said reasonably. “I think...”

What he thought they would never know, as something shook the mountain. It rocked the entire valley down below, the ground beneath their feet bucking and jumping as though it meant to throw them all off.

It knocked them all of them off their feet, both those inside and outside the cave, as the floor under them buckled and rippled, as violently as if someone were shaking it as Moominmamma shook a sheet. They knew they yelled in surprise, but their cries were drowned out in the crashing of rock and roaring of the mountain, the rocks themselves screeching against each other as if it were a living thing in pain.

The bucking finally stopped after a few seconds, seconds that felt like hours, but the tumbling of rock and groaning of the mountain went on for far longer before it all settled.

When it was all finally over, Snufkin and Little My lay covered in rock dust and pebbles, the cave around them plunged into pitch black darkness.

\---XXX---

Snufkin scrambled to his knees, feeling his way towards the entrance in a blind, desperate rush.

Please, oh please, don't be what he thought it was. Please, there had to be a way out.

Behind him, Little My coughed on dust, waving a paw in front of her face.

Rock under his paws. Rock, and more rock, and...this was where the entrance had been, he knew it. The walls had been smooth, but this was a tumble of rock, spilling into their small cave, a tumble of rock cutting them off from the rest of the world.

Trapping them inside more securely than iron bars had ever managed.

“Snufkin?” Little My asked from behind him.

“...it's a cave in. We're trapped,” Snufkin said weakly. He scrabbled at the rocks, trying to pull them free, and the pile groaned dangerously.

He froze, straining to see, but not the least bit of light made it into the cave for his night eyes to find. He pulled at the rocks again, throwing them behind him, feeling out the big ones and digging around them.

Little My bumped against his arm as she joined him.

She took a deep breath and hollered Moomin's name, making Snufkin jump at the volume next to his ear.

\---XXX---

Outside the cave, Moomin and Snorkmaiden picked themselves up slowly.

“What was that?” Snorkmaiden asked, looking up the mountain. “Oh no, the cave! Didn't Snufkin and Little My just go in there?”

She and Moomin exchanged panicked looks and dashed into the cave.

A wall of rock met their eyes, blocking the back end of the cave, and faintly they heard Little My calling.

They yelled her name back, attacked the wall, claws digging deep into dirt and rock, throwing rocks behind them in a frantic scramble

“It's no use,” Moomin said after a few minutes. “We're not enough. Snorkmaiden, hurry, run and get help! I'll keep digging. Hurry, I don't know what might happen next!”

Snorkmaiden, a sickly yellow green in fear, nodded and took off at top speed while Moomin redoubled his efforts, ignoring each time a rock bit into his paw or scraped at his skin, the pain that rocketed up his arms when he hit a rock that refused to move.

All these rocks...if they sealed the entrance, then...how much cave was there left inside? What if it fell again? What if they had it sealed off too tightly, so that...

He had to hurry!

\---XXX---

Snufkin's paws were cut up, scraped and bloody from digging at the rocks, throbbing with pain. His claws had to be dulled by now from digging out rocks, scrabbling against more rock, rocks that never seemed to end, that refused to give way.

Panting, he curled in on himself. Was the air already thicker in here? Were the walls always this close?

Little My's paws grabbed at him, pulling him away from the pile. He clawed at the wall, at the floor, struggled to break free, freezing when she snapped at him, teeth catching his sleeve, as sharp click that echoed in the tiny space.

She shoved him against the wall, much stronger than her small size indicated, and pulled his head down until their foreheads touched.

“Breathe. There's still air,” she said sternly. “But not if you keep panting like that. Calm down. Come on, breathe with me.”

They stayed that way for seconds that felt stretched into minutes as Snufkin tried to calm down, to slow his breathing.

“Good. Now stop freaking out.”

Snufkin couldn't see Little My – even his night vision was no match for this pitch blackness, which was only making the feeling of being trapped worse – but he could visualize the glare she was giving him.

Which was why he started when she patted his hair, her small paw lingering before the sound of her small boots pattered off, back to the entrance, and the scrape of rocks sounded out again as she started digging once more.

\---XXX---

Little My didn't let people know how she was feeling, usually. She was a gremlin and, most of the time, she liked it that way.

But right now she was feeling more like a big sister than a gremlin, a feeling that was surprisingly sharp and protective.

She knew Snufkin didn't like being inside, that he felt caged in at times, but she'd never thought that he'd react like this to being trapped.

And, with the absolute lack of light, she was starting to worry about the air in here along with how Snufkin was reacting.

It was starting to get stuffy.

She'd assumed at first it was so dark because they were so far back from the entrance, that the air was stuffy because it wasn't getting a breeze but the longer they were trapped...

Behind her, she heard Snufkin curl a little tighter, and it hurt with an almost physical pang. Snufkin was the cool one, the stoic one, he wasn't supposed to panic. He was always the one who stayed calm and collected in the face of danger, thought the way out of it, and if he broke down it was later when no one could see him. He hadn't panicked when the comet came, but somehow this was starting to look about as deadly and doomed as that day had been.

“It's like we've been buried alive...” Snufkin whispered.

Little My gritted her teeth, biting back her first instinctive snarl, her instinct to snap at him to stop whining and help. He'd been clawing at the rocks blocking them until Little My was sure she'd smelt blood, and panicking himself into a frenzy, snapping at him wouldn't help.

She heard the rustling of him moving and felt Snufkin next to her a moment later, his larger paws and claws digging into the rocks again, with determination now instead of the panic of earlier. “Like hell we're going down without a fight.”

Shocked at the mild curse, stronger than anything she'd heard come from his mouth before, Little My stared in the direction of her brother before going at the rocks again with gusto.

He was right. Like hell they were going down without a fight.

\---XXX---

Moomin's arms were filthy and bloodied, scratched up to the elbows. Each time it seemed he'd made progress, more rocks would slide down the tumbled pile, taking him back two steps for the three he'd taken.

He was exhausted, exhausted but still fighting, cold to his heart at the thought of his best friend and sister trapped inside the cave, what he might find if he didn't get through this pile, by the time Snorkmaiden came flying back up the mountain, a group of people behind her with Moominpappa in the lead.

Moominpappa set to work beside his son without a word, the rest of them beginning to dig alongside them or hauling out the rock to make room for them to dig out more.

A few of them had brought boards, which seemed odd to Moomin until they began shoving them into the hole he'd made, shoring it up and making a roof, stopping the small cave ins that had been stopping him, slowing his progress and keeping the other two trapped.

With renewed hope and a silent prayer that they weren't too late, Moomin found new reserves of energy and began slinging rocks out of the way.

\---XXX---

Inside the cave, they had stopped digging.

The air was tight, now, and breathing was getting difficult, and continuing to dig was asking too much.

They huddled together on the floor opposite the hole they'd been digging, leaning against each other and trying to conserve what air was left.

It was so unfair, Little My thought. She'd only just found her little brother after he'd been missing for so long, just known him long enough to realize she had two siblings she could be actually friends with, and now this?

Beside Little My, Snufkin's thoughts were following a similar pattern, though he included Moomin and Snorkmaiden, Moominmamma and Moominpappa and his own parents in the mix. And to die trapped in a cave, buried alive in a cage of dirt and rocks...

How much air did they have left? Was anyone trying to find them? Up until these last few summers, there hadn't been anyone to search for Snufkin, were they now?

Was it worse not to know the answer to either question, or would it have been harder to know?

Moomin and Snorkmaiden had been just outside the cave. Were they trying to dig them out?

A white pinprick of light appeared before Snufkin's blurry eyes. Was this it? Was he so starved for air he was seeing spots now?

Then it got bigger, and voices called out, hazy and muffled as though being heard through water.

Paws were on him, and Snufkin was too weak, too dizzy, to fight them.

Soft paws, familiar paws, and he buried his own paws in Moominpappa's fur even as he gulped in great gasps of sweet, sweet air, carried outside in Moominpappa's arms.

Little My was doing the same in Moomin's arms, both of them moving quickly toward the entrance of the cave, people Snufkin couldn't make out but could vaguely hear quickly getting out of the way, cheering and celebrating the rescue.

Moominpappa and Moomin carried them well out of the cage into the sunshine before setting the siblings down carefully, rubbing backs and supporting them as they gulped in air.

Moominmamma pushed her way forward from those waiting, rushing to them, and Little My flung herself into Moominmamma's arms.

Moominmamma clutched her close even as she knelt and carefully drew Snufkin into her embrace.

Under his paws he could feel her faint trembling, the way she clutched at his smock, that said without the need for words how frightened she'd been at nearly losing two of the people she called her children, a status Snufkin hadn't realized he held until now.

Still feeling weak and dizzy, Snufkin let himself sink into the hug and hold onto her solid, real warmth.

They came for them, and it meant more to each of them than they'd realized.

\---XXX---

It had been a week, and still no one knew what had caused the earth to shake, what had caused the cave to collapse.

If anyone did, they weren't admitting to it.

There was damage all across the valley from those terrifying seconds, but the worst was still Snufkin and Little My and how close they had all come to losing them.

The damage to buildings could be fixed, plants regrown, things repaired or replaced. But there was no replacing the two of them.

\---XXX---

Snufkin hesitated outside the cave on the shoreline.

They'd been in and out of this cave for years. The Moominparents had traveled one leg of it, and he and Moominmamma had had a wild ride down its river only to come out near here. Moominpappa had hidden away from Aunt Jane here, and they'd had adventures over and over in the network of caves.

Hundreds of times, spending whole days in there at times.

So why wouldn't his feet move those last few steps forward to go inside?

Behind him, Moomin shuffled his feet. “We could go back to the others,” he suggested softly.

“No, I...” Snufkin hesitated, looking into the cave mouth.

Behind them, there was splashing, and Little My came up beside them. “What are you doing?” she demanded, stomping up the beach to Snufkin. Then she looked over at the cave, and said “Oh” softly.

She stared at the cave with much the same expression as Snufkin.

There were a lot of times Moomin could hardly believe they were related, but as they both stared at the cave, this wasn't one of those times, as they suddenly looked so similar, standing together.

Abruptly Little My reached up and grabbed Snufkin's paw, and began striding towards the cave entrance, with Snufkin matching her.

And they disappeared inside.

Moomin found he was holding his breath, his feet rooted to the ground.

From inside, Little My hollered, and Moomin stumbled as he flew inside.

He raced inside, calling their names, only to come up short at the cavern he and Snufkin had once climbed down, the entrance far above shining light down on them all.

Little My was dancing around the cavern, caroling out a nonsense song as Snufkin alternately watched the walls anxiously and laughed at her antics.

Snufkin turned at the sound of Moomin's approach, breaking out into a smile, and somehow, Moomin knew that they'd crossed some sort of hurdle, some sort of fear. That now, now things were going to be okay.


End file.
